Monday, May 18, 2009

Carolyn Morgan (Kingsessing branch) Testimony at City Council May 9 (transcript)

MS. MORGAN: Good morning. My name is Carolyn Morgan and, first of all, I would like to say from the bottom of my heart, thank you so very much to our City Council for having the initiative and the wisdom to give it a chance to look into the situation for the funding for the libraries, to keep them open. I thank you from the bottom of my heart.

Now, I represent Kingsessing Library, member of the Coalition to Save the Libraries, the Friends of Kingsessing Library. I'm a retired senior citizen, a grandmother and a mother. I come on behalf of our libraries throughout the City and my Kingsessing branch. We need the support of City Council, continued support. Our library needs the essential tools and materials to function.

We have many programs going on within the library. We can't look at how many books are taken out to say how a library is serviced, because a lot of the children attend different reading programs, utilize the computers through research. The work is done within the library itself.

Now, our children are in dire need of the library remaining open. It is their resource, their haven, safe haven, where they can go where they are taught, because your library is also a form of a teaching institution. We need our librarians. Our library serves the same purpose as a teacher in a public school or any school classroom.

(Applause.)

MS. MORGAN: We need the books. Computers are fine, yes. It carries them towards the future, but we need the books because the books are what help the mind to grow, to learn, to comprehend, to research, and without the proper materials and whatnot, what would be done with our children, in our census speaking, it will be a form of murder because the mind is not being fed. The physical body needs to be fed in order to be healthy.

(Applause.)

MS. MORGAN: The mental mind needs to be fed in order to grow in wisdom and knowledge, to learn how to comprehend, how to think straight, how to research, how to be able to help one another. Without books, they can't do it. Without the librarians, they don't have the teachers to teach them to learn how to research, because the schools cannot do it all. And we need our libraries. We need the funding that was cut to be restored. We need those 111 positions that were cut to be refilled. We need our security that was taken away and placed in the prisons and whatnot to come back into our libraries for the safety of our children and our workers.

We need the help of the City Council to continue to back us. Not everybody is born with a silver spoon or in blue grass country –